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Gov. Markey? Can't rule it out

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
11/16/2012 07:38:45 AM EST

Forget Marty Meehan. Think Eddie Markey.

For what?

For governor, that's what.

You've got to be kidding.

That was the reaction on Beacon Hill when it was mentioned in Statehouse circles recently that Markey, dean of the Massachusetts delegation to Congress, could be testing the waters for a possible run for governor in 2014. That is when Gov. Deval Patrick, a fellow Democrat, will leave office after serving two four-year terms, declining to run for a third.

Now that the presidential and congressional elections have closed out, political attention is turning to the next statewide election. As things currently stand, the GOP figures it has a good shot at recapturing the governor's office since there is no strong Democratic contender at the Statehouse, and that the field is ready-made for an "outsider" like Markey to step in and fill the void.

On the Republican side, it looks as though Charlie Baker, beaten by Patrick in a three-way contest in 2010, is ready to make another run for the job, especially if defeated U.S. Sen. Scott Brown does not.

The two Democrats mulling a run for governor right now are Lt. Gov. Tim Murray of car-crash fame, and state Treasurer Steve Grossman, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2002, dropping out before the Democratic primary.

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Neither Murray nor Grossman appears ready enough to electrify the party, as Patrick did when the charismatic and smooth-talking governor first came upon the scene in 2006.

But those day are long gone, and the Democrats running for governor from the Statehouse will be defending Patrick's record of costly administrative and management failures at the state drug lab, which is leading to the release of hundreds of prisoners convicted on faulty drug evidence, and at the now-closed Framingham compounding pharmacy that has led to a score of deaths and illnesses across the nation. It is not a great legacy to run on.

This has led to speculation in the hothouse atmosphere of Beacon Hill that the Democratic Party nomination for governor is ready-made for a candidate with few, if any, ties to the power brokers at the Statehouse.

Enter Eddie Markey of Malden, who is a youthful 60 years old. Markey, a rubber-stamp liberal, has been in Congress for more than half of his life, first elected in a special election in 1976, when he was an unknown member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. And although he has dreamed of becoming a U.S. senator, that never happened, nor will it happen.

But capping off his long Washington career by becoming governor of Massachusetts -- rather than continuing to work as a minority member in the GOP-controlled House -- is something that just might appeal to him, especially as there appears to be an opening. Markey, like other ranking Democrats in the House, lost his committee chairmanships when the GOP took over the House in 2010, and he will continue to be in the minority in the next GOP-controlled House.

It should be noted that Markey's redistricted 5th Congressional District now extends from working-class Revere and Winthrop, through Waltham and liberal Lexington, and ends up in Natick and Framingham. And it is in Framingham where the idea that Markey may be interested in running for governor first percolated.

Hardly had agents from the federal Food and Drug Administration, as well as local police, raided the New England Compounding Center in Framingham -- tied to the deadly national meningitis outbreak by allegedly producing tainted steroid injections -- than Markey called on the U.S. Justice Department to conduct a separate investigation.

Markey's call for a separate federal probe came even as Gov. Patrick, whose Department of Public Health oversees the compounding pharmacies, launched his own investigation into the compounding firms, and members of Congress as well as the Massachusetts Legislature fell all over themselves announcing their investigations into the situation.

"We need to know if NECC violated federal law and is subject to enforcement action beyond any violations it may be subject to at the state level," Markey said in a statement.

Markey's request for a federal probe by the U.S. Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency appeared to some Democrats an attempt to wrest the issue away from Patrick, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and the Massachusetts Legislature.

Political motives aside, other Democrats welcomed Markey's leadership role in a development that has darkened the state's outstanding accomplishments in the pharmaceutical industry.

"The more people we have looking into this, the better off we will be," one top Democrat said. "He's welcome. Besides, he'd be a good governor. He returns phone calls."

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